EFF says Google needs to be clearer on new criteria, which take effect Monday.

In a Friday morning blog post, Google said it will change its search algorithm next week to take into account “the number of valid copyright removal notices” it receives for any site. High rates of removal notices are likely to drop a site down in the search results, which Google says “should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.”

The new move appears to be a nod in the direction of rightsholders, most notably the MPAA and RIAA. The latter trade group, meanwhile, has argued previously that Google isn’t doing enough to remove possibly infringing links.

On its website, the RIAA called the new move a "potentially significant announcement."

"This change is an important step in the right direction—a step we’ve been urging Google to take for a long time—and we commend the company for its action," wrote Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s chairman and CEO, in a statement on the group’s website.

Similarly, the MPAA also applauded the move.

"We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online, and away from the rogue cyberlockers, peer-to-peer sites, and other outlaw enterprises that steal the hard work of creators across the globe," wrote Michael O’Leary, the MPAA's senior executive vice president for global policy, in an e-mailed statement sent to Ars. "We will be watching this development closely—the devil is always in the details—and look forward to Google taking further steps to ensure that its services favor legitimate businesses and creators, not thieves.”

Digital rights advocates worried about lack of recourse

Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation worries that Google’s demotion of some websites may be abused, simply because they may be accused of copyright violations, rather than evaluated or even convicted. And the EFF isn’t just being paranoid. We’ve seen many examples of rightholders issuing bad takedowns for files that were not infringing, or worse, that they didn’t own or even see.

"How does Google plan to make these determinations? Oh, and one other thing we do know, one that is particularly troubling: there will be no process or recourse for sites who have been demoted? In particular, we worry about the false positives problem. For example, we’ve seen the government wrongly target sites that actually have a right to post the allegedly infringing material in question or otherwise legally display content. In short, without details on how Google’s process works, we have no reason to believe they won’t make similar, over-inclusive mistakes, dropping lawful, relevant speech lower in its search results without recourse for the speakers."

Google acknowledges that it will continue to offer 'counter-notice' tools, but the EFF appears to be worried about the lost search rankings that may happen in the interim.

"So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner," wrote Amit Singhal, a Google senior vice president of engineering, in the blog post. "We’ll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals."

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

But will they remove the MPAA & RIAA from their google search if they receive tons of removal notices ?They are the Assholes and they need to be stopped and Boycotted.Support and Buy Your Local Art and do the same for INDIE Art.

My guess is people looking for illegitimate free downloads are already adding tags like +torrent or +nzb. As such, this isn't going to change much. As of now, when I simply search for the name of a recently released movie or album, I typically see the official page (as well as reviews) right at the top of search results.

Most Google decisions, even if not wholly agreeable, I've not had an issue with. Most of their stuff has never bothered me. I'm willing to pass off intrusions into various aspects of privacy part of the trade-off for the incredible service they provide.

However, this makes me feel ill. This is a wrong, wrong move on Google's part. And not because it has anything to do with copyright.

The reason it is so wrong is this will demote the "best answer" to a particular question a user has. Fighting spammy sites, not linking to CP, and removing individual links in search in response to DMCA requests are all fine and dandy when reducing what shows up in search or removing from search. However, demoting legitimate results because the content has had multiple valid copyright infringement issues with it is wrong, because guess what: we want our search engines to show us that information when we look for it.

This is a line I thought Google of all companies wouldn't cross. Now I just need to await the day when I type a torrent site into Google and the only result to arrive is a sign-up page to Hulu plus. Nevermind all the "linux distros" that I need from said site =P.

I guess Google's feeling pretty invincible in the search space. Otherwise they wouldn't be abandoning the "best, most relevant results" model that got them to market dominance in the first place.

I wonder what other groups will succeed in getting Google to steer users away from "undesirable" content? Maybe the pro-life lobby can get contraception and abortion sites demoted, or DOJ can get searches relating to facts about illegal drugs to return results skewed toward war-on-drugs content?

I guess Google's feeling pretty invincible in the search space. Otherwise they wouldn't be abandoning the "best, most relevant results" model that got them to market dominance in the first place.

I wonder what other groups will succeed in getting Google to steer users away from "undesirable" content? Maybe the pro-life lobby can get contraception and abortion sites demoted, or DOJ can get searches relating to facts about illegal drugs to return results skewed toward war-on-drugs content?

This is a good question. It does show that this kind of policy is on a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line on "active filtering"? It goes against the very spirit of the Internet. You can regulate criminals all you want but they won't ever go away. This sounds like putting the innocent people behind bars to make sure they don't become criminals.

On its website, the RIAA called the new move a "potentially significant announcement."

"This change is an important step in the right direction—a step we’ve been urging Google to take for a long time—and we commend the company for its action," wrote Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s chairman and CEO, in a statement on the group’s website.

Similarly, the MPAA also applauded the move.

Isn't that like having Satan (insert evil figure of your choice here) call you a swell person whose Honesty should be commended?

I wonder what other groups will succeed in getting Google to steer users away from "undesirable" content? Maybe the pro-life lobby can get contraception and abortion sites demoted, or DOJ can get searches relating to facts about illegal drugs to return results skewed toward war-on-drugs content?

This is a very important point. As a user, what good is a search engine that "censors" content due to political pressure? There are many legitimate -- i.e. not illegal or unethical -- reasons for searching for information about a topic which is either illegal or unethical.

So will they be down-ranking Youtube links then? I'd imagine they get a lot of takedown notices.

Came here to post that.

YouTube likely has the largest number of copyright takedown requests and valid ones as well. Will Google be dropping it in search? I doubt it - and YouTube will remain a top, privileged link on google.com.

Interesting.. the title is a bit unclear, it makes it sound like the RIAA can just spam takedowns at sites that they do not like to get rid of them, but then I read it and what makes a "valid claim" - is it one that has been found to be true, or one who originates from a "copyright holder" source. My guess is probably the latter, just from looking at how Google has run YouTube's policies.

I am interested about who was behind this idea, google is run on users using their sites, and it seems to me that they are increasingly making decisions to hinder their customer base - whether it is loose security, unwanted tracking, this one might make a quick search harder - all of that points to people switching search providers again. Duckduckgo recently saw a large spike in usage, with Yahoo trying to get back into its 90's form, this seems like a perfect opportunity for them, don't track, provide easy search, make useful addons, do things user friendly and Yahoo might climb back into relevance.

I could be wrong, but I could see Google preserving YouTube by means of accounting for DMCA takedown requests as opposed to the internal takedown engine YouTube employs.

Anyone who is modestly familiar with my posts knows that I absolutely abhor abuse of the DMCA (or, you could just say the DMCA...), but I may have to defend Google on this one. It's not just caving to the copycops. As someone who's worked on a number of UDRP and DMCA takedowns, I can tell you that although the system is easy to abuse, as a whole there is a tremendously strong correlation between DMCA takedowns, UDRP proceedings, or general "IP recovery" net-tactics, and low-quality, spam-and-virus laden ad sites that provide exceptionally little value to consumers.

For example, if I'm looking up Def Leppard lyrics, I will get a much more accurate "Pour Some Sugar On Me" from a licensed website than the "Pour Some Shookup Ramen" I might get from the user-uploaded page on yourfreedefleppardcouponlyricshere.info.

Of course, the ridiculous treatment of IP as real property means that Def Leppard's publisher can go around and shut down any damn lyric site they want on the premise of exclusion, but that would be a problem with the interpretations of IP and not with the downgrading of websites based on infringement.

And then If I'm wrong, maybe it will cause legitimate websites to get dropped and raise enough attention to raise some DMCA abuse awareness.

But will they remove the MPAA & RIAA from their google search if they receive tons of removal notices ?They are the Assholes and they need to be stopped and Boycotted.Support and Buy Your Local Art and do the same for INDIE Art.

aNd whilE You'Re aT It, BOYCOTt exIstING rulES for propER capitALization. THEY are a CONSPiracY bY THE MAFiAAAAAAAAA.

They are a private company not a utility and they can tweak their search engine any way they see fit. As others have said, if you don't like this, use a different search engine.

Isn't freedom of choice supposed to be a "good thing"?

Explain to me again why people aren't allowed to have opinions about corporate decisions?

Google used to be a great service. These days it's merely good. Actions like this make people like me think it is on the way to being much less useful, which means fewer people will use it, which speaks to destruction of brand equity. It's a mistake to degrade user experience; Google used to understand that, now they apparently don't.

They are a private company not a utility and they can tweak their search engine any way they see fit. As others have said, if you don't like this, use a different search engine.

Isn't freedom of choice supposed to be a "good thing"?

So you can't hate a private company for decisions they make? Does that mean they are infallible and cant be sued as well?

Well crap, better start apologising to "too big to fail" banks for fing up the economy, not to mention all those other shady dealing private companies, apparently because they are private the public has no right to dictate how they work, including the LAW.

I'm not saying good is breaking any laws (yet... in this case), but they have in the past, so have a lot of other companies, should we not hold them accountable because they are private as well?

I am interested about who was behind this idea, google is run on users using their sites, and it seems to me that they are increasingly making decisions to hinder their customer base - whether it is loose security, unwanted tracking, this one might make a quick search harder - all of that points to people switching search providers again. Duckduckgo recently saw a large spike in usage, with Yahoo trying to get back into its 90's form, this seems like a perfect opportunity for them, don't track, provide easy search, make useful addons, do things user friendly and Yahoo might climb back into relevance.

the google home page used to be so clean and pristine. now, it is polluted with corporate spam.

Doddler wrote:

I'd complain, but I've seen many instances where I'm looking for a product and a torrent site shows up higher than the official site. I can see why people complain about it.

This sounds like a fine idea to me as long as the demote the companies sending in bad notices as well. That way the system doesn't get abused. Don't like that **AA? Tough crap. Stop spamming take down notices then.

So, no more PadMapper or 3Taps on Google Search results? A legitimate copyright claim is determined by whom? It should be courts, since copyright is a matter of law ...

Google is certainly showing its age, and is giving its competition an audience who is ready to move on because of hostility towards its customers. If it's on the internet, we should be able to find it; nothing here belongs to you.

So will they be down-ranking Youtube links then? I'd imagine they get a lot of takedown notices.

Came here to post that.

YouTube likely has the largest number of copyright takedown requests and valid ones as well. Will Google be dropping it in search? I doubt it - and YouTube will remain a top, privileged link on google.com.

If so, then this move is not quite "do no evil".

well it's great that you got to quote the wrong "don't be evil" phrase, but as stated in the blog post, these are DMCA requests to take down search results for a site. If they did it based on how many DMCA requests a site receives, they would have to find out how many takedown requests every site on the internet receives, something I don't believe is logged anywhere (submission to chillingeffects.org is voluntary).

YouTube should rank right around the same place as the TPB if they are going off take down notices. Google has become, has been for a long time, another cog in the corporate machine. They are in it for the money and so is the MPAA and RIAA. So its as of no surprise that they would start turning and grinding along with the will of other corporate cogs.

So, no more PadMapper or 3Taps on Google Search results? A legitimate copyright claim is determined by whom? It should be courts, since copyright is a matter of law ...

Neither padmapper or 3taps show up in the transparency report, so, no, they will still be there.

I agree with the EFF that there needs to be transparency here, but geez, you guys, at least read the article. You need a DMCA request and you can still post a counter notice. The problem here is the same as with the DMCA: abuse of the notice system and the lag required between posting a counter notice and getting content restored (again, leading to abuse). Let's at least get our arguments starting on a factual basis...

Recent changes to Google Search demote domains with a high number of valid DMCA takedown requests. This is a custom search that searches the top 50 domains with a high number of DMCA takedown requests.

(spoiler: imagine you did most of your searches with "site:megaupload.com" appended before it was taken down. you'll probably need to rely on a different indexing site than google to wade through all the spam and crap to find real files anyway)